Would You Eat Here? London's New Offal Spot

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Good news for offal fans: One Leicester Square has moved into the spot where Fergus Henderson’s shuttered St John Chinatown once was. The restaurant is a sanctuary off London’s tourist-choked Leicester Square—and the menu is still a tour de force of British nose-to-tail cuisine…

Courtesy One Leicester Street

Snails, duck hearts, and lovage

Good news for offal fans: One Leicester Street has moved into the spot where Fergus Henderson’s shuttered St John Chinatown once was. It's a sanctuary off London’s tourist-choked Leicester Square—and the menu is still a tour de force of British nose-to-tail cuisine.

St John Chinatown earned its first Michelin star last year, but its customers' (Henderson has a passionate following of not only London foodies but of fellow chefs) and staff’s euphoria turned to despair when the restaurant and hotel went into administration a couple of weeks later.

Enter Singaporean hotelier Peng Loh, who has bought the property, rechristened it One Leicester Street and is operating it as part of his Unlisted Collection of boutique hotels and restaurants around the world, which includes Town Hall Hotel and its awarded Viajante restaurant in East London.

After a few tweaks to the décor, the restaurant reopened last month. Thankfully, Tom Harris, St John Chinatown’s head chef and Henderson’s right-hand man, is still at the stove. The highlights of our meal of seasonal small plates were smoked cod roe with a crown of light-as-air deviled pigs’ skin, a completely different animal from the thick, salty, pork scratchings you find in plastic bags in old school English pubs; snails, duck hearts, and my favorite summer herb, lovage, which is a sort of spicy parsley and delicate lamb sweetbreads with artichokes and celery.

My slow spoon-work let me down when the puddings arrived, but the morsels of wild fennel ice cream with strawberries and warm chocolate with puffed barley and malt I managed to claim were excellent. Afterwards, we toasted the restaurant’s return with wild nettle and rhubarb gimlets in the bar upstairs, before bracing ourselves for the Leicester Square crush.